Counselling Councillors
As radical ideologies battle in the UK’s local elections, Chip makes his own final push to be an elected councillor in Week 18 of 2025. How will he do?
To see how Sam Pepys spent this week 364 years ago, follow this link.
TRIGGER WARNING: Alludes to attempted suicide.
DISCLAIMER: This post, while relating true events, is entirely one person’s perspective – i.e. mine. I don’t claim to know what’s going on in anyone else’s head. If I give an impression of someone else’s thoughts, it can only be my opinion.
By the Tuesday of this week, three whole villages had received my campaign leaflet, thanks to help from Ermma, our neighbours, another Green candidate taking time out from his division, and the family of nearby St Neots councillor Lara Davenport-Ray.
That left two – though those two took up over 60% of my division.
I could get campaign leaflets to those 3,000-odd letterboxes in two days, right?
I had to try. Some 300 or so in our village, Brampton, would know me from my efforts leading the Flood Defence Group. Some 10 or so in nearby Grafham would know me from a campaign to keep a local road open to all traffic. But for most voters, my leaflet would be their first introduction to me and all I could offer.
“…probably not a good idea to seek people’s letterboxes with a torch after dark…”
My leaflet stood a damn good chance at swaying anyone who wasn’t rigidly tied to a political party. Mine was the only one with ‘action shots’, showing me working on issues a councillor could help with: flooding, education, and improving communication.
My trouble? Unlike all other parties, I didn’t have a huge team or a budget to help.
Nor did I have much time. On Monday, I was opening the new school library for Ely St John’s Primary – albeit making a local front page.
I was on my own for those two days, too. Ermma was providing make-up for the Pied Pipers production of Pippin at the ADC in Cambridge, Lara and her family were focused on her own campaign, and our neighbours were busy.
Plus I still had a job to do. But in my lunchbreaks and while Ermma was at the theatre, I strode fervently from door to door, dropping as many leaflets as possible before sunset (probably not a good idea to seek people’s letterboxes with a torch after dark…).
If I met someone on my travels, they typically took a leaflet from me cheerily. On the eve of the election, though, I had my closest brush with the hypocrisy of the newest political party in our country: Reform.
Yes, hypocrisy. I’ll call it out. I was leafletting in the Brampton street which had suffered the most flooding, where I figured they’d appreciate my flood defence efforts. But as I approached one home, a large banner in their window read,
SAY NO TO NET ZERO
So… you’d rather burn gas and increase the frequency of your home getting flooded?!
Maybe my chances weren’t that good after all…
I’d taken election day itself off work to help with Lara’s campaign. She actually did stand a chance of winning, being a very popular district councillor in her town already.
That said, her town only made up one part of her division. She was almost an unknown in the surrounding villages. And since local elections don’t attract as high a turnout in the UK as the national ones, she needed us to rustle up as many of her voters to the ballot box as possible.
“…the candidates and their teams watched like pounce-poised cats, desperately tallying up the marks…”
After a day knocking on doors to remind people what they had to do, it was off to a large sports hall in St Ives for the count. Several long tables circled the middle of the room, where folks in hi-vis sprinted in with boxes of votes from each polling station.
Each box was numbered, so the first job was to decode which was for where. The boxes were then taken and tipped out onto the tables, where teams of counting assistants began to count the voting slips.
Here, the assistants were only counting the quantity of slips – but the candidates and their teams watched like pounce-poised cats, desperately tallying up the marks for an early estimate of which way the vote was going.
At first, the atmosphere was quite genial, even electric. Georgie, Huntingdon’s Green councillor, was there with her brother, a Lib Dem. I caught up with Liam, the Lib Dem rival in my area, a very pleasant chap. I even shared a jolly chat with my Tory rival, who sits on the parish council for Buckden.
But as the estimating continued, the mood of over half the room began to darken.
Reform was receiving a substantial number of votes.
“We were hoping for penises.”
In the middle of all this, Mummy Rose sent me a message. The hospital she’d convinced to work on her leg had gone and changed their mind yet again – but for the last time.
Mum forwarded me a copy of their letter. They acknowledged that her mental health had improved, and placed the blame solely on their lack of capacity to support her themselves should the operation prompt her to relapse.
I couldn’t believe it. Mum had been so incredibly strong, and here she was dissolving into anger and teary emojis thanks to a medical team that just couldn’t accept her progress.
But myself, I was exhausted from half a week of walking, working, and little sleep, and was now surrounded by increasing despairing politicians.
In moments like this, my inner optimist lashes out like a cornered cat. I was trying to give hope to councillors left, right, and centre – everywhere but the extreme right.
Did I have any hope left to share with my mother?
Evidently not: I made a comment about how they’d worded their letter in such a way as to seem justified to an outsider, and Mum interpreted this as me saying they were right.
I wanted to call her – but it wasn’t the right place, and I wasn’t sure I had the energy. Instead, I took from the coherence of her replies that she wasn’t heading the way she had at the turn of the year, and tried to reassure her by WhatsApp that I stood absolutely on her side.
Now I felt guilty for being unable to be there fully for my mum… pressured to stay alert in case the WhatsApp exchange went further downhill… and distracted by the deepening depression all around me.
But I felt something else, too: purpose.
However difficult this was getting, I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else. I felt appreciated by all those around me, and appreciated by Mum sharing her news with me.
Whatever the outcome, I felt active, an agent of hope and agent.
I clung to that feeling like it was my sun.
After a brief break for sleep, we were all back in that sports hall for the count proper. The assistants now separated the slips into piles for each candidate, with a basket for ‘spoils’.
We were hoping for penises: the more experienced candidates had stories of real artistry among ballot spoilers. But most were just blank, or written across with phrases like, “What’s the point?” Hearteningly few, to be honest.
As candidates, the presiding officer called us to discuss the voting slips being discounted. While going through these slips for my division, a vote for me was discounted because the voter had also put a cross in a different box, but then scribbled it out before crossing next to my name.
“Er, I’m pretty sure that’s a clear vote for Green,” I said, echoed by Lara.
“We discounted those in the mayoral election,” the officer replied, then went on.
The same happened for Liam. I backed him up. The officer treated us the same as before.
Then the same happened for the Tory candidate. I backed her too.
“We’ve already discounted the others,” the officer pointed out.
“Then don’t!” I said. “Count that one, and count the others too!”
The Tory candidate and Liam echoed me. In the end, the officer relented. These were clearly papers where the voter had made a mistake, scribbled it out, then put a cross beside their intended choice.
In the end, this led to Liam and the Tory getting an extra vote each, me getting two extra votes… and one extra going to the Reform candidate, who wasn’t there to speak up for himself – but it was fair to agree the same for him.
“That really was democracy in action!” I said to my Lib Dem and Tory comrades, who eagerly agreed.
“…you’ve built an infallible house so far…”
The final count came back, me with 7.6% of the vote.
Yes, I felt a twinge of disappointment. But given that Greens got only 0% in our previous local election, and I’d amassed as many votes as almost a third of the leaflets we’d delivered, and I’d beaten the candidate representing our incumbent government, and Reform hadn’t won either…
Actually, it wasn’t a bad result at all. The best part? Liam and I seemed to have struck up a friendship. As I congratulated him, I got him to agree to meet with our Flood Defence Group, which he cheerily accepted as his first duty as our new councillor.
Then I went to the table where Lara’s votes were being counted. Together with the other candidates and their teams, we keenly watched to check that a slip with a cross for Lara didn’t mistakenly land in someone else’s pile.
When the tally came back, Lara had 623 votes, easily beating all the other parties.
Except the Lib Dems. They had 638.
The difference was small enough for Lara to request a recount. I clocked the despair on the faces of the counting assistants, but I’d also heard stories of votes that needed recounting three or four times before being settled.
We all resumed our places to observe the count – except Lara, who stepped outside for some air.
I understood. For all other candidates in her area, councilling would be their second job – but for Lara, it was already her life. As a housewife with a son of schooling age, she’d made it her mission to devote pretty much every day to improving the living standards of her local community.
That community were obviously rewarding her with their support, as she had similar numbers of votes to those she took in the district election.
But that wasn’t enough to win the county election. Her campaign needed to overcome the Lib Dem assault on the surrounding areas if it was to succeed there.
I oversaw four counting assistants myself, and didn’t spot a single error. When the recount results came back, it was Lara 623, Lib Dems 638.
Exactly the same.
I commended the counting assistants for their diligence. They really did deserve it, and I was pleased to see smiles of relief at my comment. It wasn’t their fault that someone was about to feel the crush of disappointment.
Lara returned from the café with a Slushie. “Take heart,” I said. “The important thing is, you and the Liberals completely silenced the lies of Reform in your division.”
She didn’t respond to me that much in that moment. But when I checked in with her on WhatsApp the next day, she used words to the effect of, “I’m done with 2025.”
Very similar words to those Mummy Rose had been using at the start of this year.
But by then, I’d continued my chat with Mum, and agreed we’d call out the hospital publicly for their ineptitude. We also focused on the fact they had referred her to a public hospital – apparently so she’d be ‘closer’ to mental health support should she need it (albeit the same support she currently gets, which is all based online). She’d be getting her op three months late, but at least she’d still get it.
I channelled some of that positivity into my response to Lara, pointing out that her campaign had proved her support in her district, prompted many to publicly praise her work on the council’s climate committee, and encouraged folks like Georgie and me to put our names to ballot papers.
“So while you mayn’t be putting the roof on yet,” I wrote, “you’ve built an infallible house so far, and filled it with a team you’ve inspired to keep on goin’ till the world makes sense again.”
She responded to that with a smiley selfie of us both, and shortly after posted a thank you to her voters.
So although I’d failed as a county councillor, I seemed to be doing well as a counsellor to my friends and family.
Like councilling, though, that’s a job that never really ends…
In return for me sharing these words with you, please pay just one word of yours. How would you sum up your response to this post in just one word?
Want to know why I’m asking for this? Flip back to this post here.
Let’s share tales again soon. In the meantime, ciao for niao…
$;-)
How would you sum up a week of election madness and unrelated (but major) family disappointment in just one word?
For me, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's "Exhausted"...